Brown as a noun and adjective to describe people with a brownish skin color is often perceived as insulting. Historically it has been used by anthropologists and scientists as a racial and ethnic classification to describe various dark-skinned populations, as in North Africa, the Middle East, Malaysia, and South Asia. It is also a term associated with colonialism. In recent times, brown has been used of Hispanics and South Asians in North America, many of whom self-identify as brown.

The Old English word also had a sense of "brightness, shining," preserved only in burnish. The Germanic word was adopted into Romanic (e.g. Middle Latin brunus, Italian and Spanish bruno, French brun). Brown Bess, slang name for old British Army flintlock musket, first recorded 1785.

brown

v.

c.1300, "to become brown," from brown (adj.). From 1560s as "to make brown." Related: Browned; browning.

browned off

Angry; pissed off: He got browned off at the way they treated the kids(1930s+)

brown

adjective

Opposed to environmental preservation and restoration •The opposite of green: The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers is judged brown, rather than green, on the issue of timetables for climate control(1990s+)

The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.Cite This Source

Idioms and Phrases with browned off

browned off

Very angry, as in When she locked me out I was really browned off. This expression originated as Royal Air Force slang for “disgusted” and “depressed” in the late 1930s and had crossed the Atlantic by World War II. It gradually came to be used more widely as a slangy synonym for “infuriated.” One theory for its origin, mentioned by Eric Partridge in his slang dictionary, is that it alludes to brass buttons on a uniform turning brown from lack of polishing. Partridge noted, however, that the “predominant Army opinion” was that the word had the same literal meaning as buggered.